Do cats have dreams?

[Gumbie]

The fact I might not be able to describe something, does not mean it doesn't exist.
The Ifaluk might tie their emotional states to a situation and morality, but there is still an emotional state within it.
The feelings of "happyness" you describe from two situations is just a crude application of a limited language to describe something abstract. But that abstract "feeling" still exists as something. The fact that in English and the culture we're in we call that emotion is irrelevant to the actual nature.

Cats do have what I would call emotions, and if I hit it and it scratched me the Ifaluk would call it "song", and I would call it anger, but we would be describing "something". And what the cat has when sleeping, I translate to "dreams", and the French have another word for it, and the Germans another and so on, but the cat still has dreams, whether I call it that or not.

[mpr0733]

Our family cat probably dreams of hunting as when he is in deep sleep he makes similar noises to when he spots birds of prey.

He loves Star trek too.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Gumbie

The Ifaluk might tie their emotional states to a situation and morality, but there is still an emotional state within it.

So the English description is correct, and theirs is wrong? I'd imagine they would say the same thing.

The feelings of "happyness" you describe from two situations is just a crude application of a limited language to describe something abstract. But that abstract "feeling" still exists as something. The fact that in English and the culture we're in we call that emotion is irrelevant to the actual nature.

No, it's not just that we dont call our emotions by the same name (in the sense that a French person might use the word 'heureux' slightly differently than we use the word 'happy' even though they translate to each other), its that the entire approach to experiencing emotions is different. In the West, where individualism has been the historically dominant philosophy backed up with words such as 'me' and 'I' (which again, are not present in all languages), emotions are viewed as things a person experiences individually and privately. From this standpoint, it does sort of make sense to talk about cats being happy. However, for the Ifaluk, emotions are generally seen to be social affairs, and it isnt really possible to talk about your inner state without making reference to the external world, society, and the events which caused them. The way they act on the emotion is similarly different - whereas someone who experiences 'anger' might be moved to physical violence against the person who made him angry, the person who experiences 'song' will not (violence is almost non-existant in their society). You could argue that they feel the urge to hurt people yet manage to restrain it, but you could also argue that they simply do not make the same connection between 'song' and ''violence' that we do. Assuming the latter, are they really experiencing the same thing we are?

And what the cat has when sleeping, I translate to "dreams", and the French have another word for it, and the Germans another and so on, but the cat still has dreams, whether I call it that or not.

But the way we experience our sleeping experiences, as self-conscious entities, is going to be very different from the experiences (if any) a non self-conscious being has when sleeping.

[Boogster]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

It depends what you mean by happy. The specific idea of humanity you seem to be projecting onto animals isnt universally accepted for talking about humans, let alone animals. The problem lies mainly in the way we learn words which describe inner states. For a newborn baby, their inner world will have very little structure until they have learned a language, which will then determine the way they view themselves and what they experience. Describing animals as experiencing emotions is dependent upon a very Western way of thinking about the self, and its states.

For example, one might ask whether it is possible to be jealous unless you have been taught what jealousy is. It's not a bad question - the Japanese have a word which describes an emotion called 'amae', vaguely translating as "indulgent dependency" - have you ever felt it? Has anyone who can't speak Japanese? To take a larger scale example, the anthropologist wrote several papers on research she had carried out involving a tribe of people called the Ifaluk, largely centering on the way they described their emotions. One of her discoveries was that these people just did not have a word which corresponds to the English idea of 'emotion' - the way they view their mental states and emotions has very little in common with us. One of the major differences is that, in English, we tend to think of emotions in a 'neutral' way - concentrating on what we think we feel, rather than on the circumstances that caused us to feel that way or the moral evalutation of these states. However, the Ifaluk tie their 'emotions' to what we call 'morality' in a way that is iinseperable. Rather than having a word for anger, they have a word "song" which describes "justifiable anger" (experienced by people in situations where someone has done them harm), a word "'tipmochmoch" which describes undirected anger such as that felt by someone in a bad mood, another word for the anger which is caused when numerous small things pile up on someone, and so on. Would it make sense to say that an Ifaluk experienced what we call 'anger' or 'sadness', let alone a cat or a dog? Could someone who spoke the Ifaluk language even ask that question in a way we would understand?

Imagine trying to describe what you mean by 'happyness' to someone who has never encountered a word corresponding to 'happyness', has never been happy, has never met anyone who has been happy, and has never read any books about happy people - it would be like trying to describe sound to a man who is deaf. Does happyness even describe something definite? I might experience 'happyness' when I fall in love, and I might experience "happyness" when I solve a difficult maths problem which I've been working on - but do the actual emotions I feel in either situation have anything in common except that I have learned to use the word 'happyness' to describe them? It's unlikely that the sadness felt by someone who has lost a lover is identical to that felt by someone who suffers from depression, and yet they will both describe their mental states using similar terms because the English language does not allow them any other option.

The coherent communication of inner states is only really possible between people who have had similar experiences, and share a common language which divides up mental life in a commeasurable way. And all the above difficulties arise when we are talking about communication between people who are physiologically identical. Yet, people think that English 'emotion' words can also sensibly be used to describe a creature such as a cat, which not only hasn't shared any experience with a human, but also has a completely different physiological and mental structure. It just seems rather unlikely.

Is it not rather pedantic to quibble over how emotion is defined linguistically when noone really cares about the word itself, but what it describes?

PS. In the same vein, Happiness.

[Yahwe]

stop replying to the worst post nod.

we know you do it deliberately,

to hide when you're beaten.

[Gumbie]

The dreams will most likely be similar (merely postulating here as I'm not a sleeping cat), in the way that they both recreate awake state situations.
People talk about how their dog runs, or their cat acts like it's killing, reflected in twitches similar to that situation. Humans when dreaming often make similar movements and noises, rolling around in bed, or mumbling.

The Ifaluk in my eyes experience the same things, but their approach to them is different. As you say they may not make the same connection between "song" and "anger from being struck", but their startpoint of "incoming threat makes me angry" is the same.

A blind man cannot see, and must percieve the world through other senses, such as touch and sound, and he will interpret things differently, in that to him, a cue ball and a red ball from snooker would be the same thing. But while I differenciate between ball colours, and he cannot, we still observe that there are balls.

As a self conscious human, my dreams may reflect real life, but they will be warped by the flutterings of my fantasies etc. The cat just dreams of hunting. I do not know if cats have endless falling dreams or other dreams controlled by fears and other mind trickery, but I can observe something similar to human dreaming, which I can conclude is a dream.
The cat may only dream of spherical shapes in its paws to my spheres and colours, but it still dreams of balls.

[roadrunner_0]

jesus nod, you really are talking a crock of shit

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Boogster

Is it not rather pedantic to quibble over how emotion is defined linguistically when noone really cares about the word itself, but what it describes?

If the question is "Do cats experience the same things as humans?", the answer is undoubtably no. If the question is "What do cats experience?" then the answer, if it is possible to obtain one (which I doubt), is a matter for science. If the question is "Do cats experience emotions or dreams?", then the answer will depend upon what precisely you mean by the term 'emotions' and 'dreams'.

The words 'emotion' and 'dreams' are learnt in order to describe a particular thing, namely human emotions and sleeping experiences. If you want to extend their sphere of use to describe something completely different, then you need to define them properly first in order to avoid confusion.

Originally Posted by Yahwe

stop replying to the worst post nod.

we know you do it deliberately,

to hide when you're beaten.

What posts did I ignore

(I'm off anyway, so I'll be ignoring a lot after this one!)

[roadrunner_0]

the question was NEVER at any point in the thread "Do cats experience the same things as humans?",

as that would be silly

the question was 'do cats dream?' which they do.

i really don't get why you are getting this so involved into emotion, which is a side issue

[Boogster]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

If the question is "Do cats experience the same things as humans?", the answer is undoubtably no. If the question is "What do cats experience?" then the answer, if it is possible to obtain one (which I doubt), is a matter for science. If the question is "Do cats experience emotions or dreams?", then the answer will depend upon what precisely you mean by the term 'emotions' and 'dreams'.

The words 'emotion' and 'dreams' are learnt in order to describe a particular thing, namely human emotions and sleeping experiences. If you want to extend their sphere of use to describe something completely different, then you need to define them properly first in order to avoid confusion.

I was referring more to your account of the anthropologist's research of human emotion.

In fact, I agree with you on the original subject. Cats may twitch whilst they sleep, but this is hardly enough evidence to argue that they 'dream' in the same way humans do. There is no way of telling what cats may 'dream' of, if dream they do.
Furthermore, it makes no sense to use the word 'dream' in a context removed from actual human experience, seen as human experience is all that defines the word.

[djbass]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

*snip* everything he's mentioned in this antire thread *snip*

I have seen the very arguments you are using before and from people 1000x more qualified to to make those statements, the problem is your application of this information is a little messy and well out of context. You may as well be (and probably are) quoting verbatim from some book or internet site you read this on.

Do cats dream? Yes. Do they experience the dreams the same way we do? Unlikely, but we can neither prove nor disprove this we do not have technology advanced enough to tell us.

Still, observation to a trained eye can yield useful information even when better methods do not permit us to.

I'm not a neurologist and I do not hold any degree in medical sciences or psycology so I don't expect my data to be of any significance to you.

I do know that I have owned at least 16 cats of varying species over a 20 year span of my life, long enough that I've gotten to know their habits pretty well.

One thing that I see consistantly is behaviour very much as described below:

Originally Posted by mpr0733

Our family cat probably dreams of hunting as when he is in deep sleep he makes similar noises to when he spots birds of prey.

I have observed many cats that while sleeping and in a presumed dream state go through identical motions to when they are outside hunting birds. One particularly large cat I used to own (by large I mean size of a small dog and muscley not a furry tub of lard) actually launched himself off a chair while sleeping on his back while simultaniously snatching for some imaginary object in thin air, afterwards landing back on the chair and still in a deep sleep. This is not a simple case of nerves misfiring he was actually trying to catch something.

My theory is that cats probably dream about experiences they've had during the day.

[Dante Hicks]

Sorry I'm a bit late to this thread but I broadly agree with Nod's earlier posts. To me, using the English word "dream" would not (and probably could not) apply to a cat. If you're using dream in a slightly different way then it almost certainly does apply.

Cats obviously have some kind of memory (i.e. repository of experiences in some form - in the same way a computer program logs events that occur) and it's quite feasible that things from this memory float into their "active" mind when they are asleep. If this is your definition of dream then sure, of course cats dream. But there are screen savers which display things from the computers hard drive when the computer is "asleep" - I doubt many people would term this 'dreaming' although it's probably equally as valid.

To me dreaming implies more consciousness than a cat is thought to possess. Does it matter really?

[djbass]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Sorry I'm a bit late to this thread but I broadly agree with Nod's earlier posts. To me, using the English word "dream" would not (and probably could not) apply to a cat. If you're using dream in a slightly different way then it almost certainly does apply.

Cats obviously have some kind of memory (i.e. repository of experiences in some form - in the same way a computer program logs events that occur) and it's quite feasible that things from this memory float into their "active" mind when they are asleep. If this is your definition of dream then sure, of course cats dream. But there are screen savers which display things from the computers hard drive when the computer is "asleep" - I doubt many people would term this 'dreaming' although it's probably equally as valid.

To me dreaming implies more consciousness than a cat is thought to possess. Does it matter really?

I've never seen my computer attempt to be a fish, nor have I seen my monitor spread wings and fly (flying windows lol). You can not possibly compare a living organism to a computer.

Computers get virii, people get virii, the effects on both which share many simularities, but that does not mean we are machine like, or that the computer is human like.

So for clarification, cat != computer. If you want to get technical the human mind on many occasions has been termed as a very complex neural network based protein computer, it's silly to draw such comparisons, yes these terms can apply to a wide variety of things but in doing so you are missing the point.

Also, did I not state above I have observed more complex behaviour in cats while in a 'dream' state than simply re-enacting memorys.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by djbass

I've never seen my computer attempt to be a fish, nor have I seen my monitor spread wings and fly (flying windows lol).You can not possibly compare a living organism to a computer.

Do you care to support that argument?

I wasn't comparing the two by the way, I was saying that people are saying "Hey, Object X has displayed characteristic, therefore Object X is sentient / conscious / capable of dreaming". I am saying Object Y (a computer) also has this characteristic but we would not draw the same conclusions.

[roadrunner_0]

because a cat is autonomous, a computer is not

[Structural Integrity]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Do you care to support that argument?

I wasn't comparing the two by the way, I was saying that people are saying "Hey, Object X has displayed characteristic, therefore Object X is sentient / conscious / capable of dreaming". I am saying Object Y (a computer) also has this characteristic but we would not draw the same conclusions.

apple != pear

[djbass]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Do you care to support that argument?

I wasn't comparing the two by the way, I was saying that people are saying "Hey, Object X has displayed characteristic, therefore Object X is sentient / conscious / capable of dreaming". I am saying Object Y (a computer) also has this characteristic but we would not draw the same conclusions.

Because it's over simplification of a complex issue. Compare the following two statements:

A cat is to computer as a human is to car.

Which do you think is more true?

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by djbass

A cat is to computer as a human is to car.

Which do you think is more true?

It entirely depends on the question you are asking, or the answers you're interested in. If I am comparing wu_trax, a new BMW car and a small tabby kitten from Bristol, which is the odd one out? The car, right? Well, no the cat - the other two are from Germany. Or wu_trax, the other two are under 10 years old. It really depends on what you're asking. I'm not interested if a cat is "more like us" than a object X in some overall mystic sense. If we built a robot which was capable of conscious thought (let's imagine it's feasible in the future for a second) then would it matter that a cat has more in common with us biologically than our imaginary robot?

I'll repeat again for the slow of thinking : I am not saying a cat is like a computer program. If you re-read my post I never said that. What I did say was that certain behaviour (or characteristics) that a cat (seems) to display can be replicated by a computer program. Similarly if your argument was "Cats must be conscious, they can move without the aid of wheels!" then you'd need to concede that a robot is conscious using the same argument.

The evidence that many of you are pointing to as evidence of cats being "conscious" (in the sense that I mean it) is very flimsy. That is all.

because a cat is autonomous, a computer is not

So if you built a robot which did it's own thing (say following some random pattern, or following an evolved algorithim) and derived power via solar or something, would that grant the robot some special status?

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

So if you built a robot which did it's own thing (say following some random pattern, or following an evolved algorithim) and derived power via solar or something, would that grant the robot some special status?

it would be king of the robots.

[djbass]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

It entirely depends on the question you are asking, or the answers you're interested in. If I am comparing wu_trax, a new BMW car and a small tabby kitten from Bristol, which is the odd one out? The car, right? Well, no the cat - the other two are from Germany. Or wu_trax, the other two are under 10 years old. It really depends on what you're asking. I'm not interested if a cat is "more like us" than a object X in some overall mystic sense. If we built a robot which was capable of conscious thought (let's imagine it's feasible in the future for a second) then would it matter that a cat has more in common with us biologically than our imaginary robot?

It was a highschool level word association excercise, I'm afraid you failed btw.

Believe it or not the two phrases are closely related, but the fact you can not see that shows me you are unable to distinguish between two objects of the same nature. How then am I to believe your point has any merit, the burden has shifted to you Mr Hicks. (and no, I will not explain it, if you dont get it, that's your own failing).

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by djbass

you are unable to distinguish between two objects of the same nature.

The same nature in what sense?

Yes, a cat is more like us than a computer is like a cat. Why is that even remotely relevent to anything I have said?

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by djbass

I have seen the very arguments you are using before and from people 1000x more qualified to to make those statements, the problem is your application of this information is a little messy and well out of context. You may as well be (and probably are) quoting verbatim from some book or internet site you read this on.

Pointing out that you've heard something before does not constitute an argument against it, nor does artbitrarilly claiming that it is being used out of context.

Do cats dream? Yes. Do they experience the dreams the same way we do? Unlikely, but we can neither prove nor disprove this we do not have technology advanced enough to tell us.

Again, the problem is your usage of the word dream. If you dont know what cats experience, nor have the faintest idea, by what rights can you say they are 'dreaming'? You'd be as well saying they were having psychedelic experiences if they fell asleep when you played them Pink Floyd. I personally learn to use the word dream to describe my experiences at night. I infer from similarities in behaviour and physiological structures that the experiences other humans have when sleeping are similar to mine, so I can justify my use of the word 'dream' when talking about others. There is no such justification for using the word when using it to describe animals

I'm not a neurologist and I do not hold any degree in medical sciences or psycology so I don't expect my data to be of any significance to you.

I do know that I have owned at least 16 cats of varying species over a 20 year span of my life, long enough that I've gotten to know their habits pretty well.

One thing that I see consistantly is behaviour very much as described below:

What you see is very much influenced by what you expect to see. The humanization of animalsis fairly widespread within our culture, and anyone brought up in this country will encounter it at some point - it preexists them. With this in mind, its hardly surprising that children learn to view the world in this way, and to interpret the behavior of animals as suggesting that they have experiences which are 'similar but different' to their own. An interesting question would be whether this is a universal feature of human behaviour - if you had a culture where children were not bombarded with tales of talking mice and suchlike, would they still interpret the behaviour of animals in such a way - would they 'see' a cat being happy or dreaming in the way you do? I seriously doubt it.

[roadrunner_0]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

So if you built a robot which did it's own thing (say following some random pattern, or following an evolved algorithim) and derived power via solar or something, would that grant the robot some special status?

no, because you would have programmed that into it?

which leads us onto free will...

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by roadrunner_0

no, because you would have programmed that into it?

That wouldn't make it less "autonomous" (if it was random) but anyway, I already allowed for that - the program could have "evolved" over time. Do you seriously think there is some magic dust in a cats head put there by God or something?

p.s. Nodrog : I'd rep you up for your last post but the system won't let me

[Phang]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

if you had a culture where children were not bombarded with tales of talking mice and suchlike, would they still interpret the behaviour of animals in such a way - would they 'see' a cat being happy or dreaming in the way you do? I seriously doubt it.

explain, therefore, why cats purr, or jump into the air while asleep.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Phang

explain, therefore, why cats purr, or jump into the air while asleep.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_007.html

Cats don't purr just when they're feeling chipper--they also purr when they're frightened or badly hurt. Purring doesn't have any specific emotional connotation; rather it seems to be a kind of homing device. Cats learn the signal in the first few days of kittenhood, when they can't see, hear, or smell very well. The mother cat purrs to call the kittens to nurse--unable to hear the sound, the kitten can feel the vibrations.

There are two schools of thought on exactly how a cat purrs. One theory traces the vibrations to a set of "false vocal cords," a bundle of membranes that lies above the genuine vocal chords and seems to have no other clear function. The other opinion locates the purr in the vibrations of the hyoid apparatus, a series of small bones connecting the skull and the larynx that nominally serves to support the tongue. Since it's very difficult to induce a cat to purr while you are examining his hyoid apparatus, the truth may never be known.

I'm not saying I believe this (I havent the slightest idea why cats purr), only using it to illustrate that these questions could probably be answered by evolutionary biology and behavioral science, without resort to anthopomorphisation.

[Nodrog]

On a sidenote, I'd compare that question to 'why do humans smile?'. In day-to-day usage we can say that 'people smile because they are happy' (consider the following exchange: "Why is that girl smiling?"/"She won £10000 on the lottery earlier on"), but in a scientific context this would be inadequate - there is no apparent necessary connection between smiling and happyness and it would be perfectly feasible to suppose that some people never smile even though they feel happy. In this context, the reason for humans smiling would be best explained by investigating the evolutionary and cultural factors which cause people to express their happyness by moving their lips in a certain manner. However, this is interpreting the question 'why is he smilng' in a completely different way from how a normal speaker of the language would interpret it in day-to-day life - there are at least 2 utterly different ways of answering the question. I think the problem is that you want an explanation of the first type for cats, wheras I think that there is no reason to suppose that this actually exists.

[Nusselt]

Google told me the following

http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/FAQ/
http://www.discover.com/ask-discover/?qid=67
http://www.manythings.org/voa/01/010214sr_t.htm

on a side note of my own, animals are 'conscious' in the sense they are awake and responsive (not unconscious) but not all animals are self-conscious, if you hold a mirror to them they perceive what they see as another animal. You may or may not think that self-consciousness is a trait that shows high(er) intellectual ability.

[TheShadowMan]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

On a sidenote, I'd compare that question to 'why do humans smile?'. In day-to-day usage we can say that 'people smile because they are happy' (consider the following exchange: "Why is that girl smiling?"/"She won £10000 on the lottery earlier on"), but in a scientific context this would be inadequate - there is no apparent necessary connection between smiling and happyness and it would be perfectly feasible to suppose that some people never smile even though they feel happy. In this context, the reason for humans smiling would be best explained by investigating the evolutionary and cultural factors which cause people to express their happyness by moving their lips in a certain manner. However, this is interpreting the question 'why is he smilng' in a completely different way from how a normal speaker of the language would interpret it in day-to-day life - there are at least 2 utterly different ways of answering the question. I think the problem is that you want an explanation of the first type for cats, wheras I think that there is no reason to suppose that this actually exists.

agreed